WHAT WE ARE MADE OF.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3131, 21 August 1922, Page 7

WHAT WE ARE MADE OF.

Not of "snips and snaiils and puppy-J dogs' tails," or even of "sugar and spicel and everything nice," it now appears.| To begin with the blood, we are infbrnied by a contributor to The Journal' of the American Medical Association i ! ; (Chicago) that the entire volume of circulating blood, which about half fills' an ordinary bucket, contains only a' snr&,rl teaspoonful 1 of sugar and ai tablespoonful of salt. When we consider the. minute variations in the BU'gar content that the modern chemist can measure in a few drops of blood, we gain added respect for the science of quantitative analysis. The iodine in the entire blood amounts to but one-hundredth, of a gramme. 'When the physiologist tells us that epinephrin can. be detected by biologic methods in ai dilution of 1,330,000,000, it means far less than to say that it is equivalent to diluting "a small glass of whisky" into the contents of 1,320 city street sprinkling carts, which would form a procession about siix miles Jong. We all know that the; normal blood contain;* about 5,000.000 red eorpuheles in each l cubic millimetre, but do we all realise that the entire blood must therefore contain some 2~>. trillion red cells and 30 billion leukoieytes, figures that have an astronomical aspect? And do we realise that in all that mass of blood is distributed the insignificant quantity of from 1 to 3 grains of uric acid, which men assay accurately and speculate about vaguely? Linden quotes an am using, if not very precise, estimate of the total chemical composition of."the average man." which has recently been published by a big industrial company, and which may be thus summarised: fat enough for seven bars of soap ; iron enough for a medium-sized nail; sugar enough to fill a shaker; lime enough to whitewash a. chicken coop; phosphorus enough to make 2.200 matclitips; magnesium, enough for a dose of magnesia ; potassium enough to explode a toy cannon, and sulphur enough to rid a dog of fleas. Many 'items in this estimate are left largely to the imagination, such as the sizow the dog and the number of his tormentors, hut the total cost of the ingredients is given as 98 cents, which is neither expensive nor calculated to footer megalomania.. The practical • value of visualised scientific data lies not only in thei stimulation of memory through, the imagination, but also in the food for thought which they offer and in their bearing om great medical problems.